Chan'ad Bahraini

From ejAy-annE:

you could not bear talking to them [Indians] more than 15 minutes bragging in your face that he’s mr-knowing-everything (even their English has always –ing at the end of every word. you asthmatic one couldn’t for sure reach the hospital once you got inhaled their oregano smell. they are the most cunning, conceited, proud despite bastardized English speakers. they don’t know which are to be capitalized when they write and the most complainant living beings on earth. never attempt bargaining to them or you will go home with formed lines above your meeting eyebrows. as a neighbor, you will feel dizzy on their fishy smelling door and their curry aroma and you will almost everyday quarrel because they will never forget to complaint with just about everything. be it belonging to affluent or below ones category, they see money as gold on their hands that they are irreasonably frugal and wise over money. (Continued)

In one of my posts I spoke of the "Global Chaos" (term stolen from sensed) that exists in Bahrain, as opposed to the "cosmopolitan harmony" that some of us might want to portray the inter-ethnic relations on the island as. Despite the huge and varied number of nationalities and ethnicities residing here for generations, few of us know anything about the other, outside of employer-employee and customer-salesman relationships. The quote above is from a resident Filipina venting her feelings about the resident Indians here, and I thought it was a perfect example of this "Global Chaos".

For sure, she is pretty harsh on her Indian neighbours, but I think that everyone who has lived in Bahrain has gone through something similar. Whether it's a rant about "those lazy Bahrainis" at the Directorate of Traffic, "those snobby Brits" at the supermarket, "those unmannered Pakistanis" at the Suq, "those flamer Filipinos" at the barbershop, "those indecipherable Sri Lankans", or "those bloody Saudi drivers!", we've all been through it. Such stereotypes are likely to exist no matter what, but it is somewhat worrying how little we interact with each other and how little we really know about our neightbours. But I think that blogs like these offer the opportunity, on a very limited level, for people from different backgrounds to interact with each other, and hopefully helping to remove such stereotypes. Or at least, it will help us to learn which sterotypes are true, and where they arise from.

If I had the time, I'd love to write down all of my "pet peeves" about all the other ethnic groups on the island and share them with you. It would be a fun project no doubt.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 30, 2004 at 11/30/2004 02:48:00 am. Permalink